


speak a little louder

by damerons (noblydonedonnanoble)



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Asexual Rey (Star Wars), Multi, Post-Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Spoilers, she's also probably demi- or gray-romantic let's be real
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-31
Updated: 2019-12-31
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:15:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,821
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22058395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noblydonedonnanoble/pseuds/damerons
Summary: It was a quiet life, compared to the life they’d led. None of them said it aloud, but Rey suspected that it was what they all needed, at least for a time.
Relationships: Finn/Rey (Star Wars), Poe Dameron/Finn, Poe Dameron/Finn/Rey, Poe Dameron/Rey
Comments: 9
Kudos: 142





	speak a little louder

Rey fell into the Falcon co-pilot’s seat beside Poe, and he barely even glanced at her as he said, “About two more hours until we get to Coruscant.”

“Alright.”

The ETA was courtesy, a way of Poe gently telling her she could go back to sleep if she wished.

By this point, though, they both knew very well that she would not. The nightmares didn’t hit after the war, not right away, but once they did, it was bad—sometimes Finn or Poe had to nudge her awake, explaining that she was screaming in her sleep, and she and the sheets were always drenched in her cold, clammy sweat.

She’d stopped trying to go back to sleep after those bouts, and if anyone noticed the dark circles developing beneath her eyes, no one said so.

Instead, she got up and played dejarik with Chewie and Finn, if they were awake, or she’d sit quietly with BB-8 while it charged up or told her stories of adventures with Poe in the Resistance before they and Finn crash-landed on Jakku and everything changed.

Poe was not the last choice, per se, as much as it was that he always seemed so… involved, when she went to the cockpit and inevitably found him there. Half the time they bounced from one system to the next, they would put the Falcon on autopilot, but Poe liked to keep an eye on things anyway.

Rey understood that inclination, the way he probably liked to feel more in control, but it made her feel like she was interrupting, too.

Sometimes, though, she craved his company enough that she disrupted that sense of privacy, crawling into the empty seat, curling up under a blanket, and listening to the ship hum and whir around them.

“A transmission from Rose came in earlier,” Poe told her after a while. “She says Maz is nearly ready for us to pick up the engine parts she’s been collecting.”

“That’s convenient. Aren’t we heading to Corellia anyway to pick up that pilot?”

“Yep. If all goes well, we should be able to swing by Maz, unload the parts, and get the pilot within the next two days.”

Rey smiled and settled back further in her seat. She remembered herself, back on Jakku, wondering at what she’d do if she ever reached the stars, and she knew that this would never have occurred to her—operating a garbage heap of a ship with her friends as they acted as emissaries for a new, burgeoning government after successfully defeating the First Order. Hell, half the time they were little more than a glorified escort for people or material goods, doing little on a given planet besides picking up, dropping off, refueling.

It was a quiet life, compared to the life they’d led. None of them said it aloud, but Rey suspected that it was what they all needed, at least for a time.

“Can I ask you something?” she said carefully.

“Hmm?”

Rey glanced over her shoulder, her eyes landing on BB-8, powered down in the corner of the cockpit. “BB-8 was telling me about some mission you had in the Outer Rim, I think on Kaddak—”

“It’s all lies,” Poe said immediately.

“Lies that that was the mission that made BB and Threepio like you? Not just trust you because they’re programmed to, but like you?” Rey peered at Poe, self-consciously delighting in the faint blush that crept up his neck and ears.

“BB said what now?”

“Something about a mission going horribly wrong, you and your crew getting captured by the First Order…”

Poe nodded slowly, but he didn’t deny it again. “Right. I… recall something to that general effect.”

“You’ve worked really hard to build a relationship with those droids,” Rey said kindly, as though perhaps Poe had not noticed.

“What’s your point, Rey?” He sat fidgeting with a few of the buttons in front of him. Rey pretended not to notice that the Falcon was still on autopilot, and consequently, that nothing he was touching would do anything.

She pulled her blanket snug. “It was nice. I liked hearing about you in the Resistance before Finn and I met you, especially because BB is so proud of you.”

For the first time, Poe turned his head and really looked at her. “Why that mission?”

“You owned all of your mistakes in your report to Leia, and you made sure she knew that the mission would have been a total loss without BB and Threepio.” Rey met his eye and smiled. “It made them feel like partners.”

The corners of his mouth perked up, but he said nothing.

\--

After their defeat, the First Order left behind thousands of brainwashed troops. With the aid of Lando and many of her fellow defectors, Jannah was doing the difficult job of finding and rehabilitating them.

This was a slow process—the First Order had countless outposts at the time of its fall, and plenty of soldiers connected to those outposts had been on their own missions elsewhere. Despite the urgings of Poe (of General Dameron, as most of the galaxy knew of him), the other Resistance leaders, and the galactic government, plenty of residents were reluctant to play nice with the ones who had mistreated them so long. As a result, many of the soldiers had gone into hiding.

Finn, Poe, and Rey rarely participated in the search themselves, getting too many calls from too many places at once to do the arduous work of scouring planets for First Order survivors. That is, until word reached them that Jannah’s team had been attacked by a particularly angry set of locals, who were less than pleased by the idea that First Order troops deserved to be rehabilitated.

“We need to help them,” Finn announced at once.

Poe looked to Finn, bewildered but amused at Finn’s immediate determination. “Didn’t you hear Connix? She said that they’ve already resolved the issue.”

“Yeah, I heard Connix say that they’ve already dealt with one group of resentful locals, but I _also_ heard her say that they’re planning to continue searching the planet. They could use more help, just in case anything else happens.”

Rey and Poe glanced at each other, as though waiting to see which of them was going to point out Finn’s rashness. After a few seconds, it was Rey who said, “Finn, we’ve already got five jobs set up for the next two weeks. We can’t put them all on hold or ask them to find someone else just because we’re a bit nervous about some of our friends.”

And Finn knew that, because he didn’t argue, not exactly. Instead, he said, “But you two could spare me for a while.”

“Hey, that’s not true,” Poe retorted. “Who’s going to keep the peace between us and our shady trading partners?”

“Or between me and Poe,” Rey offered. Poe pointed to Rey and nodded seriously.

These arguments, though, were half-hearted at best, as they could see that Finn was unlikely to be talked out of this plan.

“I know you both probably think it seems impulsive, but I’ve been thinking about this for a while now. I was lucky enough to break out and stumble into the Resistance, but a lot of First Order soldiers didn’t get that chance. It would mean… a lot to me to help Jannah and the others. At least for a little while.”

Something about his tone sold them on his resolve, because after one more glance between Poe and Rey, Poe left to figure out how best to get Finn to Jannah and her team. Less than a day later, Finn was gone.

Without Finn, a new routine developed on the Falcon. It was quieter. When they disagreed about something, they often pulled themselves out of it by chuckling over what Finn’s reaction likely would have been.

They missed him, although neither said so aloud. But without even discussing it, they stopped taking on quite so many jobs, much of the joy gone without their friend.

As an unintended side effect, they ended up back at home more. Poe fretted over the government and military inner workings in exactly the way that he’d been trying to avoid by running jobs across the galaxy instead, and Rey…

Well, as much as Rey had been desperate to get off of a nowhere planet like Jakku, she still didn’t quite know what to do with herself when she had to stand still somewhere else, somewhere better.

Sometimes she would go to Finn’s barely-used quarters, and often, she found Poe there. It wasn’t even like the space really connected them to Finn—he hadn’t bothered to make it his own, perhaps a remnant of his life as a stormtrooper. If anything, though, its emptiness was precisely what they needed. They were able to sit in that space and feel the absence of him, the hole his new mission with Jannah had left in their perfect team.

Finally, they received word from Finn that Jannah’s crew would be taking a break from their mission, and not a minute too soon; he was ready to come home to them.

Rey was in his arms the moment the hatch to the Falcon opened, clutching him tight as she told him, “We’ve decided you’re not allowed to leave us again. Not for that long.”

Finn clenched his eyes shut, trying to hold back the tears of joy at seeing them again. When he opened them, though, he saw Poe hovering, as though appraising the reunion.

“C’mere,” he said, gesturing Poe over with a hand.

The three of them clung to each other for an eon.

“I missed you guys, too,” Finn told them.

\--

It was shortly after this reunion that Poe chose to revisit an unanswered question that has been plaguing him since the end of war.

He and Finn found themselves in an isolated corner of a lively bar, huddled close over their drinks as they waited for Rey to return from a training session with a Force-sensitive child. Poe was just the right amount of tipsy, warm and grinning and a little more honest about his feelings than was his inclination.

“Can I ask you something?”

Finn gestured him on, his attention half directed toward an argument happening between the bartender and a Devaronian customer who looked quite displeased.

“I was thinking earlier about Pasaana.”

“Mhm.”

“And how you nearly told Rey that you were in love with her.”

This got Finn’s attention. He looked away from the bar abruptly, eyes wide as he said, “Nearly told Rey what?”

Poe leaned on the table and settled his chin in his hand. “I mean, there’s no other logical explanation. Something you urgently wanted to tell Rey, specifically, as we were about to die?”

“Look, Poe, it’s not…”

“Hey, buddy, calm down, I wasn’t just trying to get you flustered about something that happened in a previous life.” Although he finds it quite endearing. “You’re not letting me get to the question.”

Finn furrowed his brow. “Okay, go on, then.”

“ _Regardless_ of where you stood with…” He gestured vaguely in the air. “ _All that_ then, I’m just curious where you stand with all that… now.”

Perhaps it wasn’t anywhere close to the most intelligible Poe could have been, but as previously addressed, he _was_ drunk.

It also wasn’t the most honest Poe could have been, but there was only so much that the alcohol could push him on that front.

“With Rey?”

Poe shrugged. “Open-ended.”

Silence hung between them, with Finn opening and closing his mouth more than a few times as he nearly spoke, then decided against it.

Finally, Poe threw him a bone.

“I’m talking about us, Finn.”

“Oh.” The panic left Finn’s eyes.

\--

“She’s having too much fun with this,” Poe faux-whispered to Finn, intentionally raising his voice loud enough for Rey to hear.

“If you two keep talking, I will make you leave.” She didn’t even look at Finn and Poe. “You’re going to ruin their concentration.”

Here, she was alluding to about a dozen Force-sensitive children, spread out in the spacious room while Rey walked them through a meditation not unlike that which she worked on with Leia during her own brief training. Finn and Poe sat in a corner by a window, watching the process with interest.

As much as Poe was teasing her, they did like it, seeing Rey this way. This was the part of her power she liked—guaranteeing that understanding of the Force didn’t die with Luke, Leia, and Ben, but that none of the hubris about Force sensitivity hung over the people who had it.

It felt like she was doing her part to ensure that they didn’t fall into the same traps as the old Jedi Order or the old Republic.

And sure, maybe she was having fun with it.

When Rey dismissed them, one eager child hurried up to Poe and asked whether he truly was the same General Dameron who led the attack on the First Order’s Sith fleet, and for a few minutes, Poe recounted the harrowing details, but they were soon left alone.

“I don’t know why I let you talk me into bringing you with me to this training session,” she told them.

“Because without us you would probably turn into a too-serious Jedi Master,” Finn retorted.

“Right, right, so if you think about it, we’re really just doing our part for the new galactic government.” Poe grinned.

Finn and Poe walked slower, hand in hand on their return to the Falcon, with Rey and BB-8 leading the way and getting stopped more than once by locals who recognized her as the new Jedi (“no, no, I’m no Jedi,” she’d always insist) who was training some of the children from surrounding villages.

And yes, it was fun, meeting the Force-sensitive folks around the galaxy and introducing them to the intentionality with which they could connect to their ability, but as they reached the Falcon, it was a relief to shut themselves away in their ship.

“I’ll get our dinner together,” Finn told them, evidently ready to immediately leave them in the loading room while he went to raid their food storage.

“Hey, hold on.”

Poe pulled him close, gave him a peck on the lips as the doors shut. As they ceased to be the heroes of the Resistance.

“You’re blushing,” Rey told him as Finn left.

“Tell her she’s imagining it, BB-8.” But Poe smiled softly at her as they headed to the cockpit to prepare for take-off.

\--

“Can I ask you something?” Finn said.

It seemed like a less than ideal time—Rey was half-asleep on her favorite seat in the main hold, and despite a steady decrease in nightmares, she still tried to catch whatever sleep she could.

But reluctantly, she said, “Hmm?”

“Do you remember… that thing I nearly told you, on Pasaana?”

Rey’s eyes nearly shot open.

Now, she hadn’t thought about it often. Immediately after, she’d been mostly grateful that Finn hadn’t brought it up again; chances were, she could guess what he’d been about to tell her, and even once the war was over, she wasn’t sure she really… wanted anything like that with him. With anyone, really, although her feelings about Finn seemed potentially different in that respect.

Then they fell into their life with Poe, and she’d essentially put it out of her mind. Partially because Poe was… Partially because Finn and Poe were…

Frankly, even though she occasionally did remember what Finn had almost said, she liked the way things were enough that if he didn’t bring it up, she saw no reason to.

Her eyes did not shoot open, but she did take a slow breath before turning her head and looking at him. “I do.”

“Right…” Finn said slowly. “I’m… really understanding why Poe had to be drunk to do this right about now.”

“Why Poe had to be drunk to do what, Finn?”

“To see if it would mean anything that he still likes you,” Poe said, surprising both Rey and Finn as they turned to see him leaning against the wall beside Finn.

“Oh.”

“And that… I do too.”

Again, Rey said, “Oh,” while Poe met Finn’s eye and simultaneously told him, “See, I didn’t have to be drunk this time.”

“That’s because you’ve had more practice,” Finn muttered.

Rey’s stomach twisted with a peculiar combination of excitement and nerves. “It does… mean something,” she said carefully. “But before all this, before the Resistance, I never really… thought about things like this, whether I’d fall in love and grow old with anyone. I’m not sure what I’d want out of that with you.”

“Right,” Finn said softly, encouragingly.

“I imagine we have quite a while to figure it out,” Poe offered.

Rey looked between them both, and she smiled.


End file.
